I have been shark fishing on the Algarve, Portugal for 20 years and after trying many different charter boats have given up on the charter skippers who are living on their past catches when things were very easy. I have had the pleasure of fishing with a local expert angler with his own boat who has not blanked on sharks for 3 1/2 years. OK its possibly not fair to compare with charter boats that go out most days, but still makes you think, especially when I know he was out catching when we had nothing on a charter boat fishing the same area for 5 days and he had 4 fish on one trip!!! With up to 17 fish on one great day last year.

So this year I put my 1st few clients with my new skipper and they had a great time with 3 or 4 fish per trip including mako shark to 112lbs and blue estimated at 125lbs. This skipper can only take the odd trip out due to pressure of existing commitments, so I needed a back up, so I asked a local man who has a tackle shop and his own boat if he was interested in trying shark fishing, he is very experienced bottom fishing angler, but had not fished for sharks seriously.

He was more than interested and admitted he had been thinking about it himself, so we set up dates for my next 2 clients to fish with us. I know the area we would fish well after fishing it with an English charter boat skipper for many years, who unfortunately had to give up. With this knowledge I told my mate where to start the drift, I was determined to use the experiences that i have picked up from all my other trips and optimise the time we would be out.

1st day out was nothing special, one small blue and a mako around 40lbs

2nd day was slow for first 4 hrs, then it went mental for 1 1/2 hrs with over 10 runs, unfortunately most of the fish came off, some after fighting for 15 minutes, we had 3 very big blues around 8 ft long fighting on the top that just came off! Another big fish that again came off fighting under the boat after 15 minutes on 80lb class gear, one mako and a medium sized blue landed, then i lifted into what felt a big fish, which I had on all of 2 minutes when it bit me off, we can only assume it might have been a big mako.

If we had been on normal charter trip we would have easily missed this action, as we would have been back in harbor as the time period was beyond the normal time of around 4hrs the charters are willing to stay out. We go out for the day and stay out whilst the fish are feeding.....!

3rd day with a father and son from London fishing the same area and same methods and it went mental again, 1st run came when my mate was sending out the 3rd bait, only 10 minutes into the drift and a 70lb mako unhooked safely released at the side of the boat. Over the remainder of the day we had steady to frantic action with up to 3 fish on at one time, all mako sharks, most jumping 5ft out of the water. We had 9 fish, all safely released, best estimated at 130lbs, this was on for 25 minutes on 80lb class rod, other gear is 50lb class and really took some hammer!

Again we lost some fish, one bit clean through the wire, this fish we had on for 5 minutes and in that short time it also tangled on 2 other rods and it bent 2 x 50lb class rods over double taking line....... one other mako around 6ft long jumped out of the water and the hook dropped out!

Over all a very exciting day and very unusual as the fish were all mako sharks, although we did have a big blue in the chum trail which did not take our bait.

If you fancy some of this sort of shark fishing action, either single day or a longer trip, get in touch and find out more: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

How to book your holiday:

If you wish to get more info on any of our trips then use our online booking einquiry page and tell us what type of fishing you want, how many will be coming, and when. We will then contact you to confirm your dates before you start booking flights and insurances etc. This gives us an opportunity to fine tune your trip and cater for your personal needs.

We look forward to hearing from you and organising a full holidy trip out to the Algarve or catering for you on a day out whilst out here on a family holiday.